1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a distributed network of servers or entities, each having user specific information that may be shared across the network. The system is particularly concerned with the management of customer relationships with one or more service providers.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, organizations hold an increasingly large and complex amount of information about individual customers. There is a significant administrative overhead in managing, updating, and correlating a customer's information. As a result, within any single organization, different departments may have different disparate and segmented views of the same individual customer.
Within many organisations there is a problem with maintaining an accurate and up to date view of a customer across all internal systems. The number of customer transactions and the volume of data collected from those transactions can be very high. In addition, there can be a wide variety of different data collected depending on the application. Over time, new data fields will be required, and old fields may be eventually discarded. Therefore customer information is both increasing in size and complexity. For example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data held on a hotel customer will include standard details such as name, address, dates of previous stays, and payment card details, but might also include preferred room type and location, hotel facilities used, and feedback history.
If customers have dealt with a particular service provider (SP) before they will expect to be recognized in all future transactions and treated appropriately. They do not want to have to repeat information that they have already disclosed. For example, any change of address or preferred payment method must be reflected in all future transactions. In turn, this increases customer satisfaction and helps retain customers. A few regular customers can generate more revenue than many infrequent customers. In order to provide this service a large administrative burden is placed on the SP in order to keep customer details up to date, and to cater for the complex data sets.
EP 0 917 119 describes a distributed network based wallet system that is adapted for a provision of a safe, secure and properly authorized transfer of information while preserving individual privacy. The system provides a centralised storage depot for storing personal information about a person, yet differentiates between the type of information that may be accessed by third parties.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,105,131 is also concerned about the secure processing of sensitive customer information over distributed networks such as the internet. This system provides such security by storing the user data and processes in vaults only accessible by an authenticated user.
The latter two disclosures base their treatment of the user information on a central depot for the information which is then accessible by a user or third party on authentication of same. This requirement for central storage means that the datastore associated with the user needs constant updating of information in order to have everyday use or applicability. It further requires high level of trust between users of the system as all users are accessing the master datastore and although their privileges may be restricted using security protocols and the like there is a possibility of corruption of an entire dataset, and subsequent loss of all information pertinent to the user.
In addition to the multiple storage of information relating to customers it is also known to provide loyalty cards, which identify a specific customer account, to the customer in order to track transactions and reward frequent patrons. However, this results in a number of such cards and tokens being required by the customer for each and every service provider (SP) with whom they interact. FIG. 1 is an example, in a high-level block diagram format, illustrating how existing prior art customer relationship management systems fail to obtain a unified view of the customer and require use of a multitude of different customer identification tokens.
Conventional loyalty cards are not easy to deploy as typically a lengthy application procedure must be followed by the customer. The loyalty card usually takes the form of a physical plastic magnetic stripe card or smart card. In addition, each SP issues their own loyalty card, requiring the user to apply and carry a new card for every single SP they interact with, as is shown in FIG. 1.
There is therefore a need to provide a system and method that enables a user to easily interface with a plurality of service providers in a secure manner. There is a further need to provide a system that provides for a single authentication of the user and the subsequent use of that authentication across a wide platform of independently operable servers as operated by different service providers.